


drowned goddesses

by misura



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Bathing/Washing, Character Death Fix, F/F, Loyalty, Post-Finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-24
Updated: 2020-05-24
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:06:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24353326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misura/pseuds/misura
Summary: What is dead may never die. (post-S8)
Relationships: Yara Greyjoy/Daenerys Targaryen
Comments: 11
Kudos: 37
Collections: Hurt Comfort Exchange 2020





	drowned goddesses

**Author's Note:**

  * For [amitye](https://archiveofourown.org/users/amitye/gifts).



They put Daenerys into the sea, feverish and delirious, her hand reaching out for Yara's - the priest steps between them, and Yara nearly runs him through, what do old men know of love or loyalty or queenship, but then she remembers the stakes and steps back towards the shore, the lesser mortals and the dragon who will slaughter them all if this goes wrong.

"What is dead may never die," - but Daenerys isn't dead, cannot be dead, not like this, killed by yet another Stark who thinks himself righteous and right - _fuck the Starks,_ Yara thinks; they've taken all her brothers, even Theon, in the end.

The sea closes in, and the salt, and Yara waits.

*

Daenerys rises with the tide, the first woman to rule the Iron Islands, to sit in the Seastone Chair.

"It should be yours," she tells Yara; rough, strong hands to scrub out the salt in her long, silver hair.

(The hands that held her under were strong, too; she remembers the moment she opened her eyes, to feel the fever go, to see her blood in the water, the sting of the salt in her wounds - she remembers realizing that she was still alive, the last of the Targaryens, the Mother of Dragons, the Breaker of Chains, and what is death, if not another prison, another chain to drag people down and let them get crushed by the wheel?)

Yara shrugs. "Don't want it," but what she means is, what Daenerys hears it, _'you're more important to me than any throne could ever be,'_ (and she remembers telling someone once, that she has no love on this side of the Narrow Sea, only fear; a lie made insignificant by the betrayal that came after).

Daenerys reaches blindly, finding Yara's hand. "I will prove myself worthy of your gift. I swear."

Yara kisses her fingers, and then she walks around the tub, letting Daenerys work open her shirt, her breeches; there is laughter and warmth and love, and for a short while, neither of them speaks of war.

*

"Aegon conquered seven kingdoms with three dragons," Daenerys says, and Drogon looks up from where he's been napping in the sun, yawning either because he's still sleepy or to show off his big teeth. (Yara's got four ships fishing for his dinner every day, and she still gets the feeling he's holding himself back, accepting less than he considers his due, for Daenerys's sake.)

Dragonstone proved easy enough to take, left practically undefended - and why should it have been otherwise, with Daenerys presumed dead and Jon Snow exiled and all the small-minded lords of Westeros squabbling as their king loses himself to visions of everything but the present?

True, Aegon had two sisters, two more dragons than Daenerys's one, but what of it? Aegon did not have the Iron Islands, did not have friends in Dorne, in Highgarden, and who knows where else?

Not everyone has already forgotten who stood against the living dead.

"You're better than Aegon," Yara says, kneeling less because Daenerys expects her to and more because she feels like it, because kneeling for Daenerys is infinitely better than bending the knee to anyone else.

"I'm a woman," Daenerys says, meaning, 'it goes without saying that I am better than Aegon'. Her hand rests lightly on Yara's head. She went into the sea barely able to walk; Yara had carried her from Drogon to a bed, and then outside again, to the sea and the priest, to gamble everything on a god notorious for his whims, his cruelty and capriciousness. "And I have you."

"My queen," Yara says.


End file.
